Chase the Case

Contents

Host

Co-host

Broadcast

Bandicoot for BBC One, 17 September 2018 to present

Synopsis

Five players, five sealed cases, and plenty of questions.

Dan Walker (right) and some coloured cases.

Each player is issued with a coloured case, containing one of £5000, £1000, £500, £100, and £0. Dan Walker asks trivia questions on a loose theme, and the first players to give three correct answers earn the chance to go into a soundproof room and find out about someone else's case.

Two tools are available in each round - "Peek" will open someone else's case, and "More or Less" will compare the player's case to someone else's. A player may never see what's in their own case until they've won.

Security guard Deborah deposits the blue case on the red case.

Four rounds of "The Reconnaissance" are played, revealing a little more information each time. We viewers are privileged to all the facts, but the players only see information if they earn it. That's proper dramatic tension.

"The Final" is general knowledge questions on the buzzer. A right answer allows the player to step forward on the grid – five columns of four squares, all but the first square are red.

When a player lands on a red square, they can challenge another player - two questions each, a buzzer question to break the tie. Win the challenge and the challenger takes over the other player's case, and eliminates that other player from the game. We viewers see what's in the removed case, but the players don't.

Red has challenged green, and he's out of the game. Viewers will see what's inside the red case.

The first player to give five correct answers crosses the finish line, and wins whatever's in their case. Or, if all the opponents are knocked out through challenges, the last person standing wins.

There's a lot to like about Chase the Case. The questions are firm and solid, written with wit and verve. Dan Walker is as pleasant and affable as ever, and security guard Deborah Anderson expresses emotions just from her body language. The typeface is joyful, and there's a strategy game we can play along at home – show producers Bandicoot produced little cards you can fill out as the show progresses.

The music was stark electronic bleeps, at odds with the rest of the show. And the format struck us as "good" without ever threatening to be "great".